Wednesday, May 27, 2009

After California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he wanted to abolish welfare to ease the budget deficit - even while failing to rein in handouts to the prison industry or huge salaries for his cronies - the Terminator realized he was on a roll. (Ending welfare would not only make California the only U.S. state with no welfare program. It would also make it the only place in any First World country without such a safety net.)

12 comments:

California is in a real crisis. The California experiment of simple majority voter ballot initiatives, coupled with two-thirds majorities required for tax increases and budgets may not be dead, but it is quickly resembling a corpse.

Schwarzenegger really doesn't have a lot of good options. Its not the same as the Federal government, whose budget never seems negatively impacted by economic downturns.

Schwarzenegger can stop handouts to corporations and the "corrections" industry.

As for ballot initiatives, that depends. Something like Prop 8 should have been nixed by the legislature or the courts because it was an attempt to deprive the public of rights that were already ruled to be inalienable.

Upon further review, among the other cuts California is considering that you did not report, is the release of as many as 38,000 nonviolent prisoners for a savings of an estimated $53 million. That's likely to include a large number of drug offenders. More could be saved by handing over custody of all illegal immigrants to the feds, the governor says. Additionally, a state prison may be sold.

You are right, California was spending too much and now it has to cut back considerably because tax receipts are down. States -- even ones run by so-called conservatives -- are learning during this recession that the well of taxpayers money isn't bottomless and big government isn't sustainable.

Washington needs to learn this too, but it won't so long as it can use treasury bonds like credit cards (and in the process devaluing the American currency and mortgaging the country's future).

My Starving Writer Fund

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